Connecting you with Australian culture online
Australian weather and the seasons European discovery and the colonisation of Australia Great Barrier Reef The Australian Gold Rush Australian Indigenous cultural heritage Melbourne Cup Convicts and the British colonies in Australia Australian food and drink Sydney Opera House The Great Depression
As elsewhere in Australia, European settlement disrupted Aboriginal patterns of land use and movement across the country, and many Aborigines died from European-brought diseases like influenza, smallpox and tuberculosis. The Griffins, Walter Burley and Ma...
Each year the Sydney Festival offers a rich and diverse program spanning all art forms including dance, theatre, music, visual arts, film, forums and large scale free outdoor events. The National Multicultural Festival is held over two weeks and features...
The bark petitions were the first to use traditional forms and combine bark painting with text typed on paper. Petition to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd by Galarrwuy Yunupingu from Yirrkala, Northern Territory, 23 July, 2008. In July 2008, Yunupingu presented...
Australia experiences a range of 'natural disasters' including bushfires, floods, severe storms, earthquakes and landslides. Fire can often follow drought, and drought can be followed by flood. I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains, Of ra...
Dupain, Max (1911-1992), Sunbaker, 1937, photograph, 37.7 x 43.2cm. Image courtesy National Gallery of Australia. 2007, Dupain's Sydney Opera House, Exhibition Hall, Sydney Opera House, Sydney....
James Francis (Frank) Hurley (1885-1962) is regarded as an extraordinary Australian photographer, adventurer, filmmaker and writer. Image courtesy National Library of Australia: nla.pic-an23478581. In 1911, Australian explorer Douglas Mawson hired Hurley...
Image courtesy of the National Trust of Queensland, Hou Wang Temple. The businesses in Chinatowns offered accommodation, medicinal herbs, fresh food grown by Chinese market gardeners and groceries. A Chinese school, a language and culture centre and a Ch...
The emergence of 'dot' paintings by Indigenous men from the western deserts of Central Australia in the early 1970s has been called the greatest art movement of the twentieth century. Papunya was described as a 'centralised government settlement establis...
Military bands have accompanied Australian ceremonies, parades, church services, mess dinners and performed at concerts on innumerable occasions since then. Band musicians and band music owe a great deal to Australia's Salvation Army. Other Australian p...
Heritage walks and tours in Melbourne offer a range of guided and self guided tours including the Golden Mile Heritage Trail, and the National Trust conducts walking tours of the city which 'take you down the hidden laneways and tell the stories of the in...
Australia is a unique and diverse country in every way - in culture, population, climate, geography, and history. For articles on specific topics about Australian history and culture visit our Australian Stories Index. Australia's population is concentrat...
Harold Pierce Cazneaux (1878-1953) is regarded as Australia's leading pictorial or art photographer. Harold Cazneaux (1878-1953), Spirit of Endurance, 1937, photograph, 510 x 635mm. Harold Cazneaux (1878-1953), The quest: portrait of Rainbow Cazneaux, 1...
By the 1930s, modern style flourished in retail, entertainment, pubs, milk bars, modern swimming pools and fashion. Australia’s reception to modernism is a complex story of spasmodic cultural transformation led by avant-garde experiments and the cr...
Cotton, Olive (1911-2003), Tea cup ballet , 1935, photograph, 37.3 x 29.6cm. Image courtesy of Art Gallery of NSW. O Cotton & S McInerney, Olive Cotton: photographer, National Library of Australia, Canberra, 1995. ...
The South Australia's Women's Suffrage Centenary celebrations, 1994. Commonwealth women's suffrage reflected the rights of women to seek election in South Australia and to vote in Western Australia, rights granted between 1895 and 1899. The suffragettes...
Street decorations in George Street during the visit to Sydney of H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, June - July 1920, photograph: b&w. The 1867-68 visit of the little-known Prince Alfred to Australia was the very first by a member of the British Royal family. ...
Robin Boyd, Roy Grounds and Harry Seidler have contributed significantly to modern Australian architecture by applying modernist-style principles to Australian homes. Another group of architects, such as Glenn Murcutt, Tina Engelen and Ian Moore, and Trop...
In England, furniture, jewellery, household items, ceramics, hand-decorated wallpapers and textiles, gardens and even entire houses were produced in the Arts and Crafts style. The Arts and Crafts movement spread internationally. Australian designers lea...
Australian children's literature rests on the enthusiasm and talents of many individuals, including a great many more Australian writers, illustrators and books than can be listed in this article. The earliest books published for children were mostly ins...
Community radio stations receive government funding through the Community Broadcasting Foundation, which was established in 1984 as an independent, non-profit funding body for community broadcasting in Australia. The Community Broadcasting Association of...
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